By Tayo Joseph Lagos
Rickey Tarfa, SAN, on Tuesday, March 13, 2018, failed to open his defence over a bribery allegation before Justice Adedayo Akintoye of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Igbosere, Lagos.
Tarfa is facing trial on an amended 26-count charge of an alleged willful obstruction of officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, refusal to declare assets, making false information and offering gratification to a public official.
Akintoye had, on February 9, 2018, dismissed a no-case submission filed by Tarfa and ordered him to open his defence in a criminal charges filed against him by the EFCC.
However, at the resumed hearing today, Tarfa’s counsel, Jelili Owonikoko, SAN, moved an oral application for an adjournment to subpoena the witnesses in the matter .
In the application, he told the court that the witnesses said they needed the subpoena before they could come to testify in the matter before the court.
“My Lord, the matter is for the defence to open its case. The defence would have opened its defence, but the witnesses we have lined up to testify are subpoenaed. However, we have not been able to serve the process.
“We shall be asking for an adjournment to the already fixed dates of March 21 and 22, 2018,” Owonikoko said.
The prosecution counsel, Nnaemeka Omewa, did not oppose the application for adjournment
” My Lord, I confirm that the learned SAN informed me of his predicament to produce a witness in court today.
” We shall not be objecting to the application for adjournment. But we just want to inform the court that the ruling in no- case submission was delivered on February 9, 2018 and we believe the defence ought to have served the subpoena before now,” he said.
Consequently, Justice Akintoye adjourned to March 21 and 22, 2018.
